The major question regarding the Charge this offseason will be the future of head coach Alex Jensen.

The difficulty is not even Jensen knows the answer.

“A lot of coaches spend more time worrying about their next job than the one they have at hand. I don’t,” Jensen said. “I probably need to think more about it than I do. But that will take care of itself.”

The 36-year-old Utah native has forced teams to think about him.

Jensen has guided the Charge to a combined 61-48 record the past two seasons and consecutive playoff appearances. This past season included 30 wins in the D-League’s 50-game regular season and an East Division title.

It should be mentioned that these were Jensen’s first seasons as a head coach ... on any level.

“He’s the best,” Charge Director of D-League Operations Mike Gansey said. “If he doesn’t get Coach of the Year, I’m going to be disappointed. Maybe I’m a little biased, but I hear the talk around the league, too.”

Jensen’s first season might have been more impressive than this past season. The Charge didn’t have second- or third-round picks in the 2011 draft. The 2011-12 season was thrown out of whack by the NBA lockout. A total of 27 players suited up for Canton, and in the D-League that means 27 different agendas.

Jensen endured all this while, again, being a head coach for the first time.

“Moving one chair down on the bench is a big move,” he said. “Now everyone is looking at you in the timeout.”

Jensen learned on the fly, and won. The Charge made the playoffs, then knocked off No. 2 seed Springfield in the first round. They fell a win short of making the championship series. This past season, the Charge earned the division title but fell to a loaded Tulsa team in three games after injuries to starters Kyle Gibson and Jorge Gutierrez.

FSOhio’s Sam Amico wrote in a blog last week that a source said Jensen could be an NBA assistant as soon as next season. Asked if he would be surprised if Jensen is back in Canton next year, Gansey said, “I know people like him. When I’m on the road, people ask about him.”

Jensen signed a two-year contract with the Charge when he was hired. The organization holds an option on him for the upcoming season. There is little doubt it will be picked up.

Jensen is fine with the idea of returning to Canton. He loves the all-basketball, all-the-time mentality of the pro game and considers the D-League an invaluable learning experience.

Jensen is a basketball man to the core. He is not married. He has no kids.

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He is fully confident in his abilities, although he rarely verbalizes that. Try to compliment Jensen and he will laud his players and probably add, “I was lucky enough to learn from the best.”

After a pro career mostly overseas, the 6-foot-9 Jensen coached four seasons at Saint Louis University as an assistant for his mentor, the late Rick Majerus, who passed away late last year at 64 from heart failure. Jensen played for Majerus at Utah, helping the Utes to the 1998 NCAA title game and earning the 2000 Mountain West Conference Player of the Year.

Majerus was known as one of the game’s best tacticians and a guy who poured himself into the job with little regard to anything else, including his health.

That same kind of single-mindedness lives in Jensen.

“He’ll call me 12, 1 o’clock at night and still be watching film. He’ll send me emails at 2:30 in the morning,” Gansey said. “That’s just him. He knows no other way. That’s the way he was trained by Majerus. When you prepare for a game, that’s the only thing on your mind.”

Asked about his future this week, Jensen kind of laughed.

“Right now,” he said, “I’m thinking about who might be back next year, and how we could have run that play from the end of the Tulsa game correctly.”

Down two points in the final seconds to Tulsa in a decisive Game 3 last weekend, the Charge tried to run a set to get sharp-shooter Antoine Agudio a 3-point look. But the play broke down and the Charge were left with a low-percentage shot that missed at the buzzer.

Those kind of situations dig at Jensen.

“He’s so precise. He’s so in-depth,” Gansey said. “The first time I met him, he said, ‘When I run practice, everything is done with a purpose. When we’re doing our shooting drills, we’re doing our shooing drills within our offense.’ ”

To further that point, a pet peeve of Jensen’s is when a player just jacks up random shots after practice. Unless the shots are looks the player is likely to take in the midst of the offense, Jensen stews.

“Everything from watching film to going over plays, he was detailed,” Charge guard Kyle Weaver said. “He knew what he wanted to do, and he let us know what he wanted us to do. There was no confusion. He expected us to execute.”

Weaver heard good things about Jensen before being traded to the Charge from Austin in February. Those good things proved true.

“You can see his knowledge,” said Weaver, who played in the NBA with the Thunder and Jazz. “He’s definitely a basketball-head. He understands the game. And him being a former player, you appreciate that, too.

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“The other thing is he wants to win, man. He hates losing. We’d all be frustrated at times when he’d get on us. He definitely showed that passion. Sometimes it seemed like he wanted to go there and play himself.”

Jensen did some scouting work for the Cavaliers last summer and spent plenty of time on the recruiting trail at Saint Louis. So he hasn’t ruled out a future on the personnel side of the game.

But he seems to be a coach at heart, and that’s something to think about.

“It’s the thing I’m passionate about,” Jensen said. “I’m pretty mellow in a lot of ways. People should do what they’re passionate about.”